


The Mark

by adreadfulidea



Category: Carol (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 00:45:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6032041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreadfulidea/pseuds/adreadfulidea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Therese had never let Richard see her mark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mark

**Author's Note:**

> I'd intended this to be longer, but since I was only following the events of the movie anyway I ran out of steam. Hope it works as is.

Therese had never let Richard see her mark.

“Is is somewhere private?” he asked, and wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. They were lying on her bed and she kept shifting to the side, away from the weight of his arm across her middle. Her apartment was cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Too hot to be pressed together like they were. But every time she moved over, so did he. 

She hit him with a pillow. “ _No_ ,” she said. “I’m just - not ready, yet. Why do you always want to do everything so fast?”

“It’s not fast,” he said. “Are you afraid we won’t match? We’re going to. I don’t even worry about it at this point.”

Therese thought about their marks, paired up like a couple of cufflinks. Or earrings. It made her breathing unsettled, her stomach churn. She supposed that was only nerves. After all, didn’t every girl dream of finding the right boy for her? 

“What if we don’t?” she asked. Her voice sounded flat to her; tinny, like a bad long distance phone connection.

He hugged her, sort of, as best he could lying down. “We will,” he said, as confidently as he did everything. Sometimes Therese thought that was why she started seeing him in the first place. That she had hoped his attitude would rub off on her. She never knew what to do. 

“How about in Paris?” he said. “That’s a special enough occasion, right? We’ll do it then.”

“We’ll see,” she said, which was always her response when he talked about Paris.

“I bet it’s right here,” he said, and spread his fingers wide against her belly.

Therese’s mark was on the edge of her shoulder-blade. It looked like a tiny star, the color of milky tea, with two thin lines curving behind it. Like a comet, hurtling through the sky. Sometimes she thought she could feel it itching. 

 

Her job at Frankenberg’s was a placeholder. When people asked her what she wanted to do she didn’t know what to say. “Photography,” she’d tell them, and then would say _maybe_ , or _it’s just a hobby_ or _for now_. She felt like she was standing still while everyone else moved merrily along. Or waiting for something; a bus that was late, a friend who never showed up. Her photographs collected dust under the sink. She took pictures of skylines, broken windows, the doorways of old ornate buildings. Empty streets at four in the morning when she couldn’t sleep.

“It’s like you’re in hiding,” said Dannie, as he went over what he insisted on calling her ‘portfolio’. “You only ever take pictures of the backs of people’s heads, so they can’t be looking at you.” 

“You’re reading too much into it,” said Therese. She wasn’t sure if she was telling him a lie or not.

And then, one cold December day, Carol Aird walked into the store looking for a gift for her daughter and changed everything. 

 

Therese couldn’t stop thinking about her. It didn’t make sense; they had only spoken of children and gifts and trains. They had touched once, briefly, an accidental brush of fingers. And that was all. Yet Therese replayed the encounter over and over again in her mind. She thought of it before she fell asleep, on lunch breaks at work, or most embarrassingly of all when Richard was kissing her. She pulled away from him with a flush that didn’t belong to him or his touch and felt just terrible.

One night she woke up with the distinct impression that she could smell a woman’s perfume. The room was empty.

Her mark itched like mad, the whole week after.

 

Dannie kissed her. He wasn’t supposed to, but that wasn’t what made her turn her face away. 

It was, objectively, a decent kiss. Even good. But she was overcome very quickly with the same sensation of wrongness that so often dogged her with Richard. It wasn’t horror, or disgust. She didn’t dislike Dannie or find him physically unappealing. But it was like she was trying to press a puzzle piece into a space it didn’t fit.

“Don’t,” she said, softly. He stopped.

“Is it because I don’t have a mark?” he asked. 

“You don’t?” she asked. She had heard of people who didn’t, of course. The girls at the store gossiped about the unmarked sometimes, casting pitying glances around the room. _Can you imagine? No other half waiting for you. It’s like a blueprint for being an old maid._ Therese found them condescending. 

“Nope,” he said, and there was a defiant tilt to his chin. 

“That’s wonderful,” said Therese. “I wish I didn’t.” Her mark was the sword of damocles hanging over her head. She hadn’t picked it, or asked for it. What if she didn’t like the person who shared it with her? Being matched was no guarantee of happiness. And Richard kept asking, and asking -

Dannie raised his eyebrows. “First time I ever heard someone say that.”

“There’s only one person out there for me,” said Therese. “And I don’t know who he is. I might never even meet him. And what am I supposed to do if I don’t, just be miserable? You could have twenty-five girlfriends and love them all.” 

“Wow,” he said. “You’re making me out to be a real lothario. I kinda like it.” 

She laughed a little, under her breath. “I just think it must be nice,” she said, and tucked her hair behind her ears. She had the urge to get it cut but didn’t know what style she wanted. Maybe she would go wild and chop it off in a pixie, like Audrey Hepburn. “To have so many choices.”

But Richard would hate her with short hair. He’d think she looked like a boy in a skirt. 

“Everybody’s got choices,” Dannie said. “You think you don’t?”

Therese shrugged. “Why did you kiss me?” she asked. “ _Really_ why. You know that I’m with Richard.”

He _did_ have the grace to look slightly guilty. But then he just shrugged, and went on. “You didn’t seem like much of a match. I thought maybe you were like me.” 

“That’s a pretty big assumption, Dannie.”

“I know,” he said. “So are you? A match, I mean.”

“No. Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know. That’s kind of a rude question.” 

“Yeah, but you answered it,” he said. “You mind if I say I think you can do better? Mark or no mark.”

“He’s my boyfriend,” said Therese. And there was that discomfort again, like a sudden hand on her shoulder belonging to a stranger.

“It’s none of my business,” he said. “I know. I’ll stop.”

“About _time_ ,” she said, and he laughed.

“You wanna go over your portfolio?” he asked. “I’ll help you set it up for submission.”

“If I decide to submit it,” she said. But she let him sort through the pictures and give his opinions. He had a good eye - she could admit that. And he knew the business.

She looked around the office, at the shadowed corners and over-crowded desks, and tried to imagine working there. No customers bothering her. Never having to gift wrap one single thing. Being excited, actually _excited_ to get up in the morning. It seemed impossible, like it was part of a future she would never be lucky enough to have. 

“How many woman photographers do you have?” she asked. 

“None. You’d be the first.”

Therese sighed. “Me, the first? I doubt it.”

“I don’t see why not,” he said. “Someone has to be.” 

 

Therese met Carol for lunch. She changed outfits three times in preparation, checking them over in front of the mirror. She wondered if she should have done something special with her hair. Finally she forced herself to just go; any more dawdling and she would be late. Which wouldn’t make a good impression. 

Therese really, really wanted to make a good impression. 

She didn’t know what to order so she followed Carol’s lead. Beer was what Therese usually drank, but it didn’t seem appropriate here. She wasn’t sure how much she liked it anyway; she had always ordered drinks so that she would have something to do with her hands, her mouth, and could duck out of conversations if she needed to. No one expected you to say anything if you had a mouthful of beer. It gave her time to think before she spoke.

The cocktail was pretty good. Stronger than she was used to.

Maybe that was why she couldn’t stop looking at Carol. At her smooth skin, her delicate gestures, the blue of her eyes. She was a bit like a painting come to life - no, thought Therese, a photograph, one from a glossy expensive magazine. 

Therese smiled a little when she told Carol how to pronounce her name. Her funny, foreign sounding name that nobody ever got quite right. That they tried to shorten, normalize. Richard called her Terry. 

But Carol made her name sound beautiful. She changed the words, rolled them around behind her lips, elongated the syllables until they were mysterious. When she spoke it was like a trail of perfumed smoke in a dark room. “Therese Belivet,” Carol said. “What a strange girl you are. Flung out of space.” Like it was the most wonderful thing in the world.

 

Therese visited Carol at home. They barely knew each other; she supposed it was absurd to go all the way out to the country just to hang around. Still, she felt comfortable watching Carol wrap gifts while Rindy played in the background. It was cozy. Intimate. At least until Harge showed up.

They argued outside; she watched through the window with the radio turned up. It was as if every unkind word was being directed at her instead of Carol. When Carol flushed with anger so did Therese; when Harge fell and Carol flinched in reluctant sympathy so did Therese. She had no way of knowing what they were saying but she didn’t need to. Her heart buzzed like hummingbird wings when Carol came back inside.

Maybe that explained the crying jag on the train. A response straight from her autonomic nervous system. Uncontrollable, inexplicable. 

She imagined what Carol was doing that night as she lay in bed. She was alone, she thought with a surety she could not explain. Probably having a nightcap after watching some television to wind down, sitting in the living room in her pyjamas. Daydreaming about somewhere, or someone. 

 

“Have you ever been in love with a boy?” Therese asked.

She and Richard were walking to her place. He had his bicycle with him, wheeling it along. They’d tried riding it like they usually did but it was too slushy and slippery out. Therese was ahead of him; she wasn’t sure she could have asked the question if she was looking him in the eye.

“No,” he scoffed, and his tone got her hackles up.

“But you’ve heard of it,” she said. 

“Of course. I mean, have I heard of people like that? Sure.”

“I don’t mean people _like that_ ,” Therese said. She turned on her heel to face him. “I mean two people who just - what if you were a match?”

“What?”

“What if your marks matched?” she insisted. “What would you do?”

He looked at her like she had lost her mind. “That doesn’t happen.”

“You just said it did!” 

“No, I didn’t.” He shook his head. “Terry, you know that those people fake it, right? They’re tattoos.” 

“Why would anyone do that?” said Therese. “It doesn’t make sense. People don’t - they don’t seek out being different from everyone else in that way. Especially not if it could get them in trouble.”

He stopped walking and stared at her. His hands were very tight around the handlebars of his bike. “Are you in love with a girl?”

She turned her back on him. It was cold out but she went hot from head to toe; she could feel her face flaming. “No.”

“Then why - Terry, hey! Slow _down_.”

Yet she was already walking away from him. Her hands shook when she put her key into the door. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” 

“You’re the one who started the conversation!” 

“You know what? I’d like to be alone tonight.” Therese looked back over her shoulder. “You shouldn’t come up.” She caught a glimpse of his hurt, angry expression through the glass of the door just before she shut it in his face. But it didn’t stop her from doing it.

 

They broke up a week later, while she was packing for her trip with Carol. It felt like a formality rather than a loss. 

 

She and Carol ate in roadside diners. Places that served fat, greasy burgers with fries that were charred dark brown along the edges. They combed through junk shops and laughed at the ugliest knick knacks they could find. If there was a silly roadside attraction - a two-headed snake, a building shaped like an elephant - then Carol wanted to see it. “Isn’t that the point?” she asked, when Therese expressed surprise. “Seeing America from the ground up?” A statue of Bigfoot in Delaware charmed her so much that she took a picture of Therese with him, embracing as if they were lovers.

There were small strangenesses between them that Therese was beginning to notice. She could always tell where Carol was in a room without having to look. Once Carol had answered a question Therese never asked out loud. “But you must have,” Carol said, taking a draw on her cigarette. “How else would I have known?” And they had laughed together, brushing it off. Therese never had to ask if Carol was tired and needed her to drive; she knew instinctively. 

“I had the prettiest dream last night,” Carol said as she maneuvered the car into the pearly fog of a cool grey morning. “I was swimming in the deepest, bluest water you can imagine. There was no visible beach or landline, only an ocean. And the sky -”

“Was pink,” Therese finished for her. “Rose-petal pink.” It was impossible, but she’d had exactly the same dream. They compared notes and the color rose in Carol’s face. Her eyes were so bright.

“Pity we didn’t see each other,” she said, and Therese felt her skin tingle with some indescribable pleasure. 

 

“So what happened with your boyfriend?” Carol asked when they were getting ready for bed. “Does he still want to marry you?” 

Therese was sitting in front of the mirror, combing her hair. She dropped her eyes and shrugged. “We broke up. Or I think we did - he said he wasn’t going to be there when I got back. Something like that.”

Carol put her hands on Therese’s shoulders. The warmth from her fingers seeped through the fabric of her pyjama shirt. “I hope that wasn’t because of me.”

Yes, Therese thought. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think it’s me. I think - I think I don’t like -”

“Therese,” said Carol. “What did you dream about last night?” 

Therese swallowed. Her palms were sweating and her breath was getting short. “I was with you,” she said. “We were back at the ocean, only not in the water this time. We were on the beach.” the sand was white and hot beneath their feet. Neither of them had been wearing shoes. But there was no stray bits of glass or sharp pebbles. Only the softest sand, so fine it looked like snow. “You picked up a flat rock and threw it -”

“It skipped,” said Carol. “Three times.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Therese whispered. Yes, and yes, and yes a thousand times more.

Carol unbuttoned her top until it was opened to just below her breasts. There, in the mirror’s reflection, Therese saw a mark shaped like a star travelling through the sky; a mark that matched her own. Finally she understood. She understood everything. 

 

 

 

 


End file.
